Transcultural Reckoning

So many religions, both great and small, historically hold out the lives of both men and women who under similar conditions of silence, austerity, solitude, selflessness, mediation, and worship, have deepened and broadened their awareness of the immanent interconnectedness of life and of God's presence therein. This contemplative immersion into life has had profound historical implications for ordinary lives of non-contemplatives. From these deeper reflections certainly higher thought itself has been affected in areas of psychology, ethics, and art. The contemplative experience itself is not confined to any one enculturated time or world view but is clearly culturally transcendent. This represents not a case for developing any clearer concept of God, but an existential invitation to trust and to love and to abandon oneself to a reality that modern life more and more ignores, and forgets, and even eschews.